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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29485725">of fairy lights and blanket forts</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierpoetprince/pseuds/soldierpoetprince'>soldierpoetprince</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dream SMP Oneshots [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Background Relationships, Bonding, Crumb is here in the form of a cat, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Just kids being kids, Multi, Multiple Pronouns for Eret (Video Blogging RPF), No Angst, Pillow &amp; Blanket Forts, Platonic Relationships, Team as Family, They’re best friends your honor, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Which is to say not at all, canon compliant if canon were a historical gay couple and i a modern day historian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:27:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,603</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29485725</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierpoetprince/pseuds/soldierpoetprince</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A blanket fort appears in the middle of the Holy Lands. No one knows for sure, but they're pretty sure it has something to do with the sudden disappearance of the server's five teenagers.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alexis | Quackity/Karl Jacobs/Sapnap, Cara | CaptainPuffy/Niki | Nihachu, Clay | Dream's Sister Drista &amp; Grayson | Purpled &amp; Ranboo &amp; Toby Smith | Tubbo &amp; TommyInnit, Clay | Dream's Sister Drista (Video Blogging RPF) &amp; Everyone, Cuptoast | Crumb &amp; Everyone, Cuptoast | Crumb &amp; Grayson | Purpled &amp; Ranboo &amp; Toby Smith | Tubbo &amp; TommyInnit, Grayson | Purpled &amp; Everyone, Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF) &amp; Everyone, Toby Smith | Tubbo &amp; Everyone, TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF) &amp; Everyone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dream SMP Oneshots [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123391</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>868</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Cheshire's MCYT recs!, Completed stories I've read, MCYT Fic Rec</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>of fairy lights and blanket forts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i was working on another piece when this idea suddenly possessed my mind and refused to leave it until i finished. this is the fastest i've written something in years, is this what it feels like to be productive??</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eret doesn’t know <em> when </em> the pillow fort in the middle of the Holy Lands appeared. He hadn’t passed by in admittedly quite some time, having been busy with affairs at the castle, and observation has never necessarily been his strong suit. It can’t have been too long, they reason, staring at the construct curiously from the path. For a pillow fort, it’s quite big, most likely spanning an entire chunk of blocks, with embedded wooden poles holding up pillow-enforced blankets. There’s a makeshift flag near what they assume to be the entrance—a striped fabric made of red, green, purple, black, and white fabric. She can’t see the inside of the build from here, even with her height; however, she <em> can </em> clearly see the tops of an elevated wooden deck and the telescope balanced atop it. Something tells them it wasn’t just placed there for sky gazing. He’s proven right when, merely seconds later, a tuft of poofy blonde hair pops up from behind the blanketed walls, a band-aid covered hand rushing to spin the telescope his direction. A second passes, and, after the person inside seems to realize Eret has no intentions of coming closer, they slump back slightly, though their grip on the telescope doesn’t waver. Eret chuckles, offering a friendly wave to the fort’s inhabitants. She gets a middle finger stuck up in return, which is about what she expected, honestly. It seems to start an argument within the fort’s walls though, as the middle finger is quickly pulled down by another person’s arm, who manages to pull the blond out of view entirely after a short struggle that’s followed by what Eret thinks is supposed to be whisper-yelling, or maybe even inside-volume, but ends up being loud enough for her to very easily overhear. </p><p>He lets it go on for another minute before laughing and shaking his head, returning to his original task and leaving the group to their bickering. They can let someone else deal with this.</p><p>Karl is initially afraid of the fort. It’s such a large structure, especially for what it is, that it can’t have just appeared there overnight. He worries that his memory is deteriorating even further, maybe more than he’s even able to keep up with anymore. His anxiety must show, as Sapnap pulls the trio to a slow stop, thumb stroking the back of Karl’s hand soothingly as he asks if everything’s okay. Karl does his best to brush it off, casually slipping in a joke about how <em> that’s </em>where all their pillows must have gone, to which Quackity loudly laughs at. </p><p>“Weird, right? I’m pretty sure it just popped up here a few days ago. No one’s dared get too close. Apparently you get assaulted with eggs and snowballs if you do,” Sapnap comments with a shrug, unknowingly lifting a major weight off of Karl’s shoulders. The time traveler laughs to shake off the nerves, pulling his fiancés closer to his side with a smile.</p><p>“We better watch our steps then!”</p><p>The sign goes up a few days later, after George had gotten a bit too curious and found himself on the presumed front steps of the premises. (They have yet to find an actual opening in the walls. Wilbur is half-convinced they've set up some underground tunnel system leading in and out.) He was immediately drenched in buckets of honey, eggs, and feathers, which Dream swears he will never let him forget about. The next day, a cardboard sign is placed at the foot of the fort, proudly reading “MINERS ONLY &gt;:P NO ADULTS ALLOWED” in hastily-scribbled crayon. No one’s quite sure if it’s intentional or not, but they don’t mention it lest they too be subjected to the same fate George was. </p><p>That’s what ends up giving the place the name of Miner’s Fort, or just the Fort for short. The sign ends up getting updated to wood a few days later, though the original cardboard stays up, moved to permanently hang underneath the telescope’s body. Other smaller signs follow, dotting the premises in phrases such as <em> BIG MAN WAS HERE </em> or <em> NO JACK-O-LANTERNS ALLOWED</em>, though most of them are of small doodles. It becomes abundantly clear who which sign was made by—one proudly shows a first-place winner in a purple hoodie; another has a girl in a mask matching Dream’s placing bedrock above someone’s chests; one placed high up on a nearby tree has an enderman hybrid happily picking up a grass block; there’s a sign simply consisting of music discs (<strike><em>and dicks Bad spent an hour censoring out with sharpie</em></strike>); and another portraying a horned boy in a green button-up befriending a local bee colony. None of them are signed in the traditional way, but their signatures inscribe themselves in their work nonetheless. HBomb and Niki make a show about it as they praise each individual piece as if they were critics in an art museum, not-so-subtly lamenting on how they only <em> wish </em>the original artists would make more wonderful masterpieces. The Fort’s inhabitants will swear up and down that that has nothing to do with why, the next morning, the yard surrounding the area was filled to the brim with different doodles and drawings. </p><p>No one knows who the first person to notice it is, but after a while, it becomes apparent that the Fort has a pet. No, pet’s not the right word. It has a visitor. Every once in a while, someone will spot the small form of a cat entering and exiting the premises, though no one’s quite sure whose it is, much less where it ends up wandering off to during the times it’s not in the Fort. A mostly white cat, it’s patterned with orange and gray splotches on its extremities, and, by its size, it can’t be much older than a kitten. They’ve tried leaving food out for it, and calling out whenever it's nearby, but the cat only really seems friendly with those within the Fort’s walls. It’s oddly expressive, too, and Fundy swears he saw it walking on its hind legs once, though nobody really believes him. Nonetheless, they end up using the megaphone they’d stationed nearby to ask about it, careful not to overstep the boundaries of the Fort’s territory.</p><p>“Oh, that’s just Crumb! She’s super nice!” a voice responds from inside the soft walls, using their own megaphone they most definitely hadn’t stolen from Quackity’s base. “Please be nice to her! She gets nervous around strangers. Hm?” Rustling is heard through the megaphone’s speakers as someone shifts around pillows. “She wants to say hi!” </p><p>A soft, high meow comes from the Fort. Everyone greets her warmly, and make extra sure from now on to keep an eye out for her crossing the Prime Path so as to not startle her travels. </p><p>The server quickly learns that the Fort’s inhabitants will only let one person safely close enough to their borders: Puffy. No one knows how she’s done it, and she refuses to disclose such information, though Niki has a sneaking suspicion that her bakery’s missing cookies have something to do with it. One way or another, she’s become their go-to for negotiation, standing in as the messenger between conflicts. (Conflict is a strong word. Most of the time, it’s because someone accidentally got too close and got egged, or just because someone inside was needed, and they refused to come out.) She doesn’t mind, though she <em> is </em>somewhat insulted that they still won’t let her come into the premises. They claim it’s for security reasons. She doesn’t believe them for a second.</p><p>Still, she finds the entire thing endearing. Whether she brags about her position to the others is purely up to her (she most definitely does). She makes sure to drop off small presents and other trinkets whenever she stops by—a few stacks of cookies, some stuffed animals she and Eret worked together to make, grass blocks, and any extra wool she comes across. She’s never gotten a proper response to the gifts, in a sense, though if one of the Fort’s inhabitants end up going out of their way to help her out for no reason other than ‘they were bored’, well, she won’t push it. </p><p>Bad and Skeppy are expanding the statue room near the spider farm when they encounter the tunnels. They’re rudimentary, barely strong enough to support themselves, clearly made in a hurry and meant for nothing more than hidden transportation. Despite the rush they must’ve been built in, its builders went out of their way to make them fairly tall, to the point where Bad barely has to hunch over in them. The two quickly realize what they were made for, just in time to see a small white cat and a teenager in a purple hoodie turn the corner, fixate on them, then immediately turn around and run off, muttering swears as they go. Skeppy lets out a few swears of his own at the realization that Wilbur was right and he’d lost their bet, and Bad scrambles to reprimand them both for their language, though Skeppy’s fairly certain the teenager is far out of earshot by now. Not that that has ever stopped the demon. The two unanimously agree to block the hole back up and divert their digging elsewhere, as to not overstep their boundaries.</p><p>They do feel bad about startling them, though, and it’s made abundantly clear that the Fort’s residents are on-edge after an unlucky Ant ends up getting sprayed with a hose they didn’t even know the Fort had. He was well-outside of their territory, however the incident seems to have made them a bit more cautious than usual. In hopes of alleviating the tension, Bad returns to the tunnels and leaves a gift basket of muffins, a few music discs, some building blocks (most notably wool and cobblestone), and some cat treats, alongside a sign apologizing for bursting in and promising to leave them alone. He doesn’t know if they saw it or not, and worries himself silly for a few days over whether the muffins went stale, or got stolen by some wild animals, until the basket turns up at their mansion’s doorstep, completely empty asides from a single slip of paper that reads ‘<em>Crumb prefers raw chicken</em>’ and a scribbled drawing of said cat holding a heart. Bad keeps that in mind, and fulfills the wish the next time he leaves the basket within the tunnels, which has been adorned with a sign near where he and Skeppy first broke in reading ‘<em>place here :D</em>.’ Bad pretends not to see the five curious heads peeking out from the nearby corner, plus the two sets of small, furry ears, humming to himself as he places the gift basket down and returns to his usual business. Idly, he wonders if they’d like any flavours other than chocolate.</p><p>Slowly, the Fort starts to expand. Phil’s the first one to notice it, asking Wilbur if it had towers before, or if that’s a new addition he’d previously missed. Wilbur frowns, looking closer at the build in the distance. Sure enough, four towers now adorn the edges of the fort, made of wooden scaffolding encased in fluffy blankets. Where they keep getting so many, no one actually knows, though Dream’s pretty sure it has something to do with his sister and her abuse of her admin powers. They try leaving someone on-guard to see if anything would expand, as no one has been able to catch them actually building the thing; however, they make the mistake of nominating George, who promptly passes out mid-watch, waking up not only encased within an obsidian box, but with his skin covered in sharpie doodles of dicks and other obscenities, as well. Quackity and Sapnap laugh at him when he shows up at their door, while Karl rolls his eyes and leads him to their bathroom to help him scrub the ink away. It takes them two hours overall, and by the time George leaves, his skin glows redder than a redstone torch. Not-so-subtle laughter erupts when he passes by the Holy Lands, and he makes sure their telescope is fixed on him before flipping them off with both hands. </p><p>By the end of the week, the Fort has grown two more towers and three new rooms. Each tower looks to have been claimed by one of its inhabitants, with matching banners hanging from each. A purple bed, a disc, a bee, a suit, a white smiley face, and an orange cat. They’re all connected by makeshift ziplines traversed by custom clothes hangers. Crumb has her own method of transportation through a small basket also on a hanger, safely allowing her to follow after the others. Quackity swears that she manages to set it up and carry it around herself, even without opposable thumbs, however he’s never been able to get the evidence to prove it. It has to be the case, as she’s been caught traveling between towers without anyone around to help her, but they’re still not quite sure. Fundy’s started a conspiracy theory that she’s some sort of shapeshifter, which both Slimicicle and Connor wholeheartedly support. They’re the only ones. Slowly, the towers gain more decor. Eret and Puffy’s plushies start to perch against the railings, bees and cats and cows overlooking the SMP’s lands. A cardboard box oddly reminiscent of a certain cat appears on top of the orange tower’s roof, which seemingly launches a war over whose tower stands the tallest. Cobblestone is precariously balanced on top of the red one, to which black retaliates by adding at least half a stack of grass blocks. That’s beaten out by purple’s stack of glass, which is <em> then </em> beaten by green’s seemingly infinite supply of honey blocks. It all comes to a close when white’s tower is discovered with bedrock layered far past the clouds. Dream steps in then, <strike> hiding </strike> waiting behind as Puffy slowly talks them into taking it down, for the sake of the server more than anything else. They reluctantly agree, with the sole condition that they get to egg Dream before he goes. Puffy pats Dream on the back as she leaves, wishing her duckling good luck, only getting a noise of confusion in reply. As soon as she’s out of range, Dream’s pelted with more eggs than he thought five teenagers could possibly hold, leaving him scrambling for safety. A part of him wants to make egging a punishable offence on Holy Grounds, but another part of him chimes in and reminds him that they wouldn’t care. The bedrock is taken down by the time he leaves the cover of Church Prime, but the smell of eggs lingers on his clothing for weeks to come. Wilbur reasons that it was a good trade. Dream tells him the next time something like that happens, he’ll send Wilbur in, instead. The musician promptly shuts up. </p><p>The Fort becomes a part of everyday life. It doesn’t grow much further, with the exception of a few flower gardens dotted around the area, housing multiple bee colonies trained to scare away anyone who comes too close. Music blares from within on occasion, a mixture of soft Cats and raving Pigsteps. They host movie nights within every Friday, with <em> Up </em>blasting from the speakers every six weeks. They assume it’s on rotation. The server has never been perfect, but walking by the Miner’s Fort and hearing exuberant laughter coming from within, well, it might be the closest thing to perfection they can reach. And that’s okay.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>comments and kudoses are highly appreciated!! and by highly appreciated i mean they are my Life Force. they are what keeps me Going<br/>follow me on my tumblr @apollos-boyfriend i promise i’m funny</p></blockquote></div></div>
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